Robin Abcarian has gotten to the core of our political discourse: Name-calling has indeed come to trump civility.

But why is that? Is it a symptom of our political dumbing down? Does it mean that we have run out of ideas? Have we lost our sense of being a politically exceptional nation?

I cannot imagine members of our current Congress being anything like the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who in 1776, appealing "to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of [their] intentions," pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.

I am hard-pressed to imagine our present Congress doing the same.

John H. Geerken

Claremont

The writer is a professor emeritus of history at Scripps College.

***

Abcarian's evenhanded call for Democrats and Republicans to behave as adults misses the point, as all such appeals to civility must.

What is happening in Congress, and even more in state legislatures, is an ominous echo of May 22, 1856, when Southern Sen. Preston Brooks thrashed and almost killed anti-slavery Sen. Charles Sumner on the floor of the Senate with his cane.

The act epitomized the loss of civility in national discourse that was driving us toward civil war.

Today's campaign — waged for decades by one party to secure power for the powerful by degrading the political process to the lowest level of race-baiting class warfare — has spawned childish radicals who openly exult in the process of destroying the nation.

This madness can no longer be appeased by the only adults in the room. It must be confronted and named.

John Phillips

Camarillo

***

We the people are the problem, not Congress.

We blame the tea party, we blame the Republicans and we blame the Democrats, but it is us, the voters, who elected these people who are in turn failing us.

Apparently, many voters have serious short-term memory problems because we continually elect these people and then complain that they are obstructionists and not doing their jobs.

Let's remember this shameful time and put a note on our refrigerators carrying this reminder: I will become an informed citizen and vote for people who will put the good of their country ahead of their self-interest.

Watch and listen to an Iowa cafe owner's account of what it was like to have Team Romney visit. Let's just say she was not impressed with their, as she called it, arrogance. And after all the aggravation, she never even got to meet Willard.

According to the news anchor in the video, "he left a pretty big mess." The campaign broke several items and "forgot their manners." Imagine how he'd treat America (and the rest of the world) were he to become president.

Then again, after how he and Bain Capital threw away livelihoods, "ripped off and wadded up" people like they were cafe table cloths, and fired, aka "broke," employees, this incident comes as no surprise. Romney's a cold, uncaring automaton who gets what he wants regardless of how others feel or are (mis)treated.

"Stuff got broke. My table cloths they just got ripped off, wadded up and thrown in the back room... My dad's picture, an emblem my dad gave me, it got broke. Those aren't things you can replace."

"[Romney] responded, 'Well, I'm sorry your table cloths got ripped off, wadded up and thrown in the back room' and I took it as a mocking. We're the ones he's wanting to get the votes from. You'd think we would have been treated better. With how he treated me, is that how he's going to treat others? You know, if he gets in office is he going to be that way to us little people?"

This is what it will be like if Willard Romney lies his way into a win.

This analogy is the best I've ever heard for the Teabagger freshman. I can just see them strapping on their Grover Norquist headbands and marching off to do or die. Via Taegan.

Patricia Murphy says Democrats have dubbed the Republican House freshman "the kamikazes," because they "have shown time and again that they are willing to blow up their careers and everything around them in service to their cause."

"The kamikazes' casualty list this year is long. They blew up the debt-ceiling vote this summer, sparking a downgrade in the nation's credit rating. They blew up the appropriations process so thoroughly that routine spending votes morphed into philosophical standoffs that nearly locked down the federal government three times and required seven temporary funding patches just to keep the lights on. And this week, they managed to blow up not just a tax cut that nearly everyone in Washington agrees is a good idea, but also their party's hard-earned reputation for cutting taxes and, quite possibly, their chances at a long-term majority in the House and future control of the Senate."